Baskets - TVs Best Character Drama
by Ryan Scott Baskets began as a place for Zach Galifianakis to play. Along with the brilliant Better Things , Baskets was introduced as part of Louis CK’s development deal with FX, although unlike Better Things , CK had little to do with its content. On the surface an absurdist dark comedy meant to showcase the ridiculous, it quickly morphed into TV’s best showcase for brilliant, well-rounded character work. Galifianakis plays twins, Chip and Dale Baskets, who at first appear to be complete opposites (including radically different accents), but wind up being two very different manifestations of the same damaged, arrested-development persona. The rest of the cast is an odd assortment of characters, placed around the twins presumably to react in strange ways. Louie Anderson won an Emmy for portraying Chip and Dale’s mother, Christine Baskets, as an embodiment of Anderson’s own mother, long an integral part of his stand-up act. That the Emmy win was...